Monday, June 11, 2012

Designer Diary: Overview of Space Hulk: XT

The purpose of this series of blog posts (Designer
Diaries) is to give the world a look into the thought process behind my works.
Over the years, there have been three official permutations of the Space Hulk
board game. In addition to this, a number of added rules have been included in
magazines, and numerous fan-made variants have also been made public. Several
similar games have also been published by other companies.

Space Hulk: XT is my attempt to sort through all of
the extra (and in some cases, highly conflicting) rules, charts, tables, units,
weapons and missions that have appeared over more than two decades of Space
Hulk. Ideally, the finished product will take what is best from the various
versions of the game and update it to modern gameplay standards without
modifying the core of gameplay any more than is necessary. Therein, however, resides
the problem.

What are the “best” elements from each version of
Space Hulk? If I simply make a cut-and-paste Frankenstein’s monster of a game
based on what I deem to be “best,” there is little incentive for other players
to view Space Hulk: XT as any more than another random variant. My goal, then,
is not only to show what elements I
have chosen to work with, but why I
am doing so. Some game elements I find unnecessarily cumbersome, others simply
do not seem to fit within the desired balance of the game. As such, many of
these elements will not be included. It is my hope that by showing the thought
process behind these decisions, I will be better able to convince others of the
validity of the points I am attempting to make, and the gameplay experience
that I am attempting to craft.

Coming this Wednesday: action card/fog of war decks in Space Hulk: XT.